Laced with Magic

by Barbara Bretton

  What was I, a piece of lint on her shoulder? I felt my face turn fiery hot with embarrassment.

  “Bitch,” Janice murmured. “Want me to make her hair fall out?”

  It was tempting but I shook my head. “I’m fine.” Maybe if I said it often enough, I’d start to believe it.

  “No, you’re not,” Lynette said. “Your aura is tangerine.”

  I hadn’t reached the tangerine aura portion of the Book of Spells yet so its significance was lost on me. Clearly from the look on my friends’ faces, it wasn’t a good thing.

  Midge Stallworth joined us. “Honey, why are you standing here? Get over there and stake your claim before that little redheaded string bean does.”

  I jumped as a thought probe nipped my ankle, then angled around me, heading straight for Luke’s ex-wife, and I realized the shield had dissolved along with my confidence. I tried to redo the spell, stronger this time, but I kept bumping up against powerful resistance, as if the air itself had grown heavier, less yielding.

  A strange prickling sensation traveled up my arms and made me shiver.

  I’m not finished yet.

  Isadora’s voice filled my head with sound. I spun around but she was nowhere in sight. Only a telltale purple glow emanating from the glitter swept under the desk and the faintest vibration beneath my feet gave away her presence.

  The former Mrs. MacKenzie was saying something to Luke, something he didn’t want to hear if his body language was any indication. She was leaning forward, her delicate frame almost rigid with intensity, talking, talking, talking, but I knew Luke well enough to know he had stopped listening to her.

  “People, we don’t know whether or not the structure has sustained serious damage. Grab your belongings and head outside. We’ll need to bring in an inspector.” Mostly I needed to get everyone out before they realized Isadora’s glitterprints were all over the damage.

  “What about my Tupperware?” Midge asked, her round face creased with worry. “I brought my best serving pieces.”

  “The place is gonna crash down around her and she’s worried about her Tupperware,” Manny from Assisted Living said to nervous laughter.

  “Just go,” I said to Midge. “I’ll make sure you get your Tupperware.” Even if it meant enduring another one of her sales parties.

  “You heard her,” Janice bellowed. “Everybody out! Now!”

  You would have thought they’d been hit by a collective cattle prod. The church cleared in a matter of seconds.

  “You’re good at this,” I said to my friend.

  “Four kids. It comes with the territory.”

  “I’ll erase the glitter,” Lynette whispered in my ear. “I don’t think anyone noticed.”

  Which meant she had. Could things get worse?

  We could worry about the rest of the cleanup tomorrow when we didn’t have an outsider watching our every move.

  Luke helped his ex-wife to her feet. She was even tinier than I had imagined. The top of her head barely grazed the middle of his chest. He had to lean way down to hear her words.

  I, however, had no trouble hearing every single one of them.

  “ . . . we can go to your place,” she was saying to him.

  Midge was right. It was time to stake my claim.

  “We can take your car unless you’re up for walking,” I said to the ex-Mrs. MacKenzie. “My cottage isn’t far from here.”

  From the look on her face, you would think I had suggested a threesome.

  “My car is in a ravine,” she said in a clipped tone of voice.

  “My gracious!” Midge exclaimed. “I’ve lived here all my life. I didn’t even know we had a ravine!”

  “A ditch,” Luke said, looking supremely uncomfortable. “Not a ravine.”

  “Whatever,” said the ex. “I need to speak to Luke in private.”

  I had to hand it to the woman. She was very okay with confrontation.

  I expected Luke to jump in and tell her that she could say anything she wanted to in front of me because we had no secrets, but he didn’t and in the end all I could manage was a weak nod of my head.

  It wasn’t like I didn’t know he had been married before. He had mentioned it once and I had registered the fact somewhere deep inside my brain, but I hadn’t pursued the issue. I guess with all the magick breaking loose in my life at the time, a failed marriage barely registered on my radar.

  He didn’t ask me about the men I had dated. I didn’t ask him about the woman he had married.

  Up until twenty minutes ago it had seemed like a perfect arrangement.

  Now I ran the risk of everyone in the village divining the juicy details before I did.

  They weren’t even trying to be subtle about it. They were lined up on the stairs, eager to get a closer look at the new-comer and to see how I was taking this new development.

  The ex didn’t seem to notice anything, but I registered every look and heard every single pointed comment. This was the twenty-first century. Out there in the world of humans, women were no longer judged by their marital status. They were judged by their intellect and their accomplishments, not by whether some man loved them.

  But here in Sugar Maple my life was defined by a spell cast by my ancestor Aerynn three hundred years ago. A spell that tied me to one man, one love, one chance to be happy.

  Right now my prospects weren’t looking too good.

  We walked down the front steps in silence, across the muddy yard to the curb, where Luke’s truck was parked.

  She claimed the front passenger seat.

  “Chloe sits there,” Luke said.

  She murmured something that sounded like “go to Hell” and didn’t move.

  I didn’t think it was code for “I love you,” but then again, you never know.

  “Let it go,” I said to Luke. “I’ll sit in the back.”

  The five-minute drive to my cottage felt like a dozen lifetimes. I made one attempt at conversation but was met with hostile silence from the missus and a monosyllabic response from Luke. My cats were better conversationalists and they had no ex-spouses waiting to pounce.

  Fine, I thought. Be that way. I didn’t know what their issues were and I didn’t want to know. I just wanted this night to be over before anything else exploded in my face.

  After what seemed like a cross-country crawl, Luke made the turn into my driveway and came to a stop behind my Buick. I jumped out so fast you would have thought my hair was on fire.

  “Give me five,” I called over my shoulder as I hurried up the path to the front door. “I’d better make sure the felines are under control.” And make sure no blue flame holographic phone messages were sitting on the couch reading this week’s issue of People.

  “She has cats?” I heard the ex ask with a note of horror in her voice. “You live with cats?”

  I was smiling as I opened the door.

  This might be more fun than I thought.

  5

  LUKE

  “She looks like Uma Thurman,” Karen said as Chloe disappeared inside the cottage. “How did you end up with a supermodel?”

  “My office is next to her shop.”

  “My office was next to the bakery but I’m not living with Charlie Fetzler.” She cut me a look that felt like outpatient surgery. “Is it serious?”

  “Yes.”

  The word hung there for a moment, then faded as a dense dark silence settled between us. I knew that silence. It had been the soundtrack to the last few months of our marriage.

  “That explains the sweater.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” I asked. The sweater might itch like crazy but even I knew it was a great piece of knitting.

  “It means you always told me wool makes you itch.”

  “It still does.”

  “But you wear it because she knitted it for you.”

  I didn’t see much reason to state the obvious.

  I drummed the steering wheel with my thumbs. She watched as a small
blue light flickered to life behind the front window, then grew into obvious flames the color of a cartoon version of a Caribbean sea.

  It looked exactly the way Chloe had described blue light communication to me. Now I understood why it had been rendered invisible to us nonmagick types.

  Except it wasn’t invisible anymore. What was that about anyway? I’d been here four months and this was the first time I’d actually seen proof of blue light. Up until now I’d taken Chloe’s word for it. Turned out she hadn’t exaggerated. It definitely beat the hell out of my BlackBerry.

  The flames filled the front window, then slipped out and began licking their way up toward the roof of Chloe’s cottage.

  “Your girlfriend’s house is on fire.”

  The place looked like it was being attacked by a bottle of flaming Windex. “I don’t see anything.”

  “You don’t see those big blue flames wrapped around the house?”

  “Nope.”

  She yanked her cell phone out of her bag and pressed a series of buttons.

  My cell rang a half second later.

  “You’re 911?”

  I nodded. “Guilty.”

  “This is crazy.” She dropped her phone, then flung open the car door and jumped out. “Fire!” she yelled as she ran toward the house. “Fire!”

  Hard to believe a night that included an explosion in a crowded church filled with werewolves, vampires, and trolls could get any worse, but I’d underestimated the potential.

  She raced up the porch steps and into the cottage. Seconds later I burst into the hallway and almost ran smack into her. She was standing there, frozen in place, staring into the living room with the widest eyes I’d ever seen short of one of those black velvet paintings.

  Chloe was standing calmly at the desk near the front window. Pyewacket was sprawled on the back of the sofa while Lucy and Blot watched from the top of the bookcase in the corner. Dinah, the serious calico with an overbite, was draped across Chloe’s shoulders.

  Except for the fact that the calico’s tail was on fire, everything looked normal to me.

  Karen made a noise somewhere between a shriek and a hiccup, then started slithering to the ground like a melting candle. This time I was there to catch her before she crashed.

  “What’s her problem?” Chloe muttered as she unwrapped Dinah from around her neck and placed the cat on the ground. “So I haven’t vacuumed in a week. Sue me.”

  “Dinah’s tail is on fire.” I swept Karen into my arms and carried her into the room, where I deposited her on the sofa with the cats.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Blue flames are shooting out of her butt.”

  She frowned and looked at the calico sprawled at her feet. “You’re crazy.”

  I checked Karen’s pulse and respiration. Everything seemed normal. “When was the last time I told you one of your cats was shooting blue butt flames?”

  “Point taken.” She bent down next to us and took a long assessing look at Karen. “Neither one of you should have been able to see the blue flames.”

  “Yeah, but you should have.”

  Our eyes locked. We were in big trouble.

  I motioned for her to stop talking as Karen’s eyes fluttered open and she began pulling away from my grasp.

  “The fire!” She struggled to a sitting position. “You have to do something.”

  Chloe crouched down next to her. “There’s no fire. Everything’s fine.”

  “I saw it,” Karen protested. “The house was wrapped in flame.” She pointed toward Dinah, who was watching us from the windowsill. “That cat’s tail was on fire.”

  Chloe and I exchanged looks.

  “You passed out twice,” Chloe said. “I think you might still be a little off-kilter.”

  “Is that a polite way of saying crazy?”

  “No,” Chloe said patiently. “It’s a polite way of saying you were wrong.”

  “Your house was on fire,” Karen said again. “So was your cat. I didn’t imagine it. I don’t go around imagining flaming cats.”

  Chloe spread her arms wide. “If there was a fire, where’s the damage?”

  Karen’s gaze swept the room. It lingered on Dinah, who was patiently grooming her right foreleg. “I know what I saw.”

  “I don’t think you do.”

  “You’re telling me I’m hallucinating?”

  “I’m telling you that if my cat’s butt was on fire, I think the cat might be the first to know.” She pointed toward Dinah, who had stopped grooming and was now entwining herself around Chloe’s left ankle.

  Chloe turned to me. “Maybe she’ll listen to you. I have to make a few calls. I’ll be in the bedroom if you need me.”

  “She thinks I’m crazy,” Karen said as Chloe’s footsteps receded down the hallway.

  “She didn’t say that.”

  “She didn’t have to. She couldn’t get away fast enough.” She buried her face in her hands, and the sound of choked laughter filtered through her fingers.

  I felt like a bastard for letting her believe she’d hallucinated the flames so I changed the subject.

  “When was the last time you ate?”

  She looked up at me. “Yesterday. The day before.” She waved her hand in the air. “One of those days.”

  “There’s your answer. Eat something and you’ll quit seeing flaming cats.”

  “Will I stop seeing Steffie?”

  I felt like I’d been gut shot. “What did you say?” Maybe it was my turn to hallucinate.

  “Two weeks ago,” she said, stumbling over her words. “In the park behind the old house. She was sitting on her favorite swing near the duck pond.” She dragged her sleeve across her eyes and kept going. “She was wearing the red sweater I made for her that last Christmas and she—”

  Her words crashed against the inside of my head and something in me snapped.

  “Shut up.” My voice went harsh and ugly with emotion. “Don’t talk about her. Don’t say her name.”

  “She called me on the cell this morning.” She gestured toward her tote bag on the floor. “I know that sounds crazy but—”

  “Prove it.”

  “I can’t prove it.”

  “Let me hear the message.”

  “She didn’t leave one.”

  “Then show me the call-back number.”

  “There wasn’t one.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “I’m telling the truth, Luke. Just because I can’t explain it doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”

  Which was analogous to my stay in Sugar Maple, but anger trumped logic hands down.

  “You don’t understand. It had to be Steffie because of the ringtone,” she said. “She used our special song.”

  I whistled the first two bars from “Good Morning Star-shine.” “Not that unusual, Karen.”

  “That’s not it. We made this one up.” She leaned closer and I could feel the heat of desperation rising off her. “Steffie was the only other person who knew it.”

  The look in her eyes scared the shit out of me. I’d seen that look before on people in locked cells and psych wards. This wasn’t the woman I’d been married to for ten years. This was a stranger.

  “You probably dreamed it.” I wondered if her friends back in Boston knew what was going on with her, because I sure as hell didn’t have a clue.

  “I was wide-awake.”

  “What do you want from me, Karen? You want me to say that I believe our daughter is making phone calls from the grave? Tell me what you want me to hear and I’ll say it.”

  “She asked me to find you. That’s why I’m here.”

  I muttered something ugly.

  “Do you really think I wanted to see you? I’d like to forget you ever existed. If Steffie hadn’t—”

  “Who’s Steffie?”

  Chloe was standing in the doorway.

  Karen turned to me. “You didn’t tell her about Steffie?”

  Chloe
stepped into the room. “Who’s Steffie?” she repeated, her huge golden eyes darting from Karen to me.

  There was no easy way to do this. Whatever I said and however I said it, I was screwed.

  “Karen and I had a daughter, Chloe.” Full-on cop mode: crisp, clean, factually correct with the emotional resonance of a tax return. “Her name was Steffie and she died two years ago.”

  Everyone said time would lessen the pain but so far it hadn’t happened. Saying it made the whole thing real again, brought Steffie to life in front of me: a whirling, laughing, silly kid who made me feel like I had been put on the planet for a reason.

  Another woman would have burst into tears or exploded with anger but not Chloe. She didn’t move, blink, or seem to breathe. Her intensity was white-hot and probably laced with more than a touch of her newfound magic. Karen must have sensed something strange in the air because she shivered and shrank deeper into the couch, as if to put some distance between herself and Chloe.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about your daughter before this?”

  Karen didn’t give me a chance to answer.

  “Because it’s his fault she died.” Her voice was taut as over-stretched cable and probably as dangerous.

  “Is that true?” Chloe asked me.

  The cop answered her. The father couldn’t find his voice. “Steffie grabbed her bike while I was changing the oil in the garage. I didn’t hear her ride down the driveway. By the time I realized she’d left, it was too late.”

  “I would have heard her,” Karen said. “I would have known what she was doing every second.”

  “What about the time she grabbed that book of matches and—”

  “You bastard! I wish—”

  A sharp clap of thunder outside brought us all up short. Chloe’s expression still didn’t change but I was sure she had a lot to do with the timing.

  “It’s late,” she said calmly. “Why don’t you pick up where you left off in the morning.” She turned to Karen. “Motel 6 is a little south of here. It’s spartan but you’ll be comfortable. I’ll drive you.”

  Considering how much Chloe hated to drive, that spoke volumes.